From Yamoransa with love
You can consume it in any form – liquid, solid and gas. Hahaaaaa. As liquid, with sugar and ice (milk and groundnut are optional). As solid, with grinded pepper, soup, or stew and animal protein. As gas, the vulcanizers will be the best people to explain: Yes, smooth and sticky Yamoransa Fante Dokono can be used to mend punctured tyres. But don’t try that yet! Hahaaaa.
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My love for Fante Kenkey dates back to the early 80s. My guardians and I lived in a compound house, one of whose tenants manufactured the kneaded corn dough cooked in dried plantain leaves.
I used to sometimes help Maame Adasuwa, the CEO, with the wrapping of the properly mixed and uncooked dough, prior to their entrance into the large boiling pot. Each support or assistance earned me not less than three balls of the sumptuous maize meal.
There never was a day when Fante kenkey was lacking in our apartment. Never! Maame Adasuwa. Her kenkey was so nice, one could eat it without any accompaniments.
I like Fante Dokono very much. But I dare say, this morning, something makes me feel so disenchanted, if I had the power to ban those hard working industrialists of Fante Kenkey in Yamoransa, I would have. Why have they subjected me to such disillusionment? Why?
My next door neighbour went to Cape Coast over the weekend to visit her brother at the University. Wanting to dodge the infamous Kasoa traffic, she told me on Friday night how she would leave Accra by five in the morning on Saturday. She was journeying via public transport and would return with same on Sunday.
“I don’t know how you will manage this request but Selina, if you don’t intend to return to Accra with anything from Cape Coast, at least don’t deny me of Fante Dokono made in Yamoransa”, I said with a beam.
“Never mind”, she said, looking at Nii Friday who was peacefully lying on the sofa. “When I get to Moree Junction, I shall tell the driver to do me the honours of stopping for me to grant your request”, she added.
I was therefore excited when she knocked on my door on Sunday evening, to hand over to me, a light blue plastic bag full of Fante Kenkey. They were six in number, very large.
I really was grateful, considering what she went through to get me the delicacy. She narrated how she was offered a lift by a kind man who was the chauffeur of a black SUV; how the man, a self-style left-lane driver, desired to speed past every other vehicle on the road; how she at a point felt like alighting from the vehicle because she was almost sure they would be involved in an accident; and how she was feeling very sleepy in the highly comfortable car but was afraid to awake in eternity.
The man had stopped for her to get me my kenkey when they got to Moree Junction- very kind but dangerous driver. Not wanting my souvenir to get moldy, I lined them up in two rows of three in a tray, and aired them beside my kitchen window. I had planned to mash and chill in at least, six empty 500 mls water bottles. One kenkey per bottle. Iced-kenkey is one of my favourites.
I like my iced-kenkey very smooth and viscose. So I blend them. This morning, I pulled out my liquidizer from the kitchen cabinet, rinsed it and filled it with a jar of water. I began to unwrap the “big six” to commence with the blending.
I unwrapped and unwrapped. Then I unwrapped and kept unwrapping the plantain leaves. “Ah, did these women forget to pack any corn dough into these leaves?” I asked myself. I didn’t want to give up the search.
I unwrapped till I met what seemed like a small milk tin of cooked corn dough in the middle of the last leaf. “Aaaaaagh! I said to myself, “after all this hide and seek with the plantain leaves, is this all I get?”
Yes, it was a real case of “Jack where are you?” Pure deception! What I thought was to be a large piece of kenkey was barely bigger than a lawn tennis ball. I was so upset.
Don’t the manufacturers buy the plantain leaves? Or are they for free? If they indeed buy the leaves, why do they bother wrapping so much around a little piece of kenkey for GHC1?
Why do these women want to deceive the general public with the size of their kenkey? Oh how I wish I had some power to ask these womenfolk to repent of their ways or face a ban! How? Eh, how can they do that to me?
Would you believe it if I told you that after painstakingly unwrapping all the six balls of kenkey, they all floated by virtue of their weight in my water-filled blender? So my disappointment, I didn’t only have to make do with size; the balls had weight problems too.
The blending over, my booty was only two and a half bottles full. That is to say, I got about 750mls of mashed kenkey instead of the expected 3,000mls or 3 litres. Huh, I shall sue a Fante Kenkey seller one of these days.